


tell me everything i want to hear (won't you lay here by my side?)

by rainow



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: POV First Person, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), the doctor and the master are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 09:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18736507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainow/pseuds/rainow
Summary: You and the Master are dual suns in orbit around each other. He out-burns stars and fire itself, and you inch closer and closer and closer just to feel warm.





	tell me everything i want to hear (won't you lay here by my side?)

**Author's Note:**

> a small pov study of the doctor living with the master.

   You and the Master are dual suns in orbit around each other. He out-burns stars and fire itself, and you inch closer and closer and closer just to feel warm.

   _You should be in bed_ , sounds from the doorway. (And you should, shouldn’t you?)

The voice is gentle, still shrouded in sleep, nothing like the usual sharp commands torn from the Master’s shaking body. You left warm, soft sheets wrapped around him where he lay curled against your side what must have been hours ago, you realise, careful not to stir and fumbling for your glasses in the dark.

Run. Keep going. Run. Keep your hands busy.

   _Ah—_ he doesn’t startle you, no, not with that gentle press of his mind against yours from so far away in the depths of the TARDIS. Your TARDIS.

(It’s a gentle sound, just a hum in your chest.)

His voice like bitter honey, broken gallifreyan. You know it hurts to use those dead words.

_Dear me, must’ve lost track of time,_ you reckon, with the low buzz from the wires in your pale hands where you sit cross-legged on the floor in the half-dark. There’s a soft sigh as you look at him with bleary eyes and heavy hearts, your voice is low and tired, body exhausted. _Can’t sleep, ‘s all._

  Somehow you already know the exact pitch of his scoff before it tumbles from his lips, gentle pink curled into a small smirk as he tilts his head to look down at you with amber eyes.

They still look the same, you think, how they seem so sharp and cold despite how fiery hot they burn if you stand too close. If you squint, you can see how he looked at you under those first stars amongst red grass, without resentment. Backlit by the corridor lights, his short figure moves closer, abandoning its lingering post in the doorway with an outstretched hand to trace his fingers along the bared skin of your collarbone as he reaches you.

He radiates warmth like a sun, maybe like the second sun of Rivonna XI, you think, the way it orbits around the planet like a moon instead of the other way around – it scorches the outermost edges of the planet when it gets too close in orbit, but the planet needs the sun to live just as much as the sun loves this planet.

The warmth of his skin against yours thaws you to your very core as he slowly sits down beside you, but you’re not cold, you think, just lonely, and you’re about to say something as he nestles against your side and nudges your arm around his shoulders – but for once, you keep your mouth shut.

Instead, you sit there with him for a while.

You look at him, curled up against your chest full of broken hearts and feel how your tandem heartbeats run, quick and steady, nothing and exactly like how it used to be. In the dim lights, he looks peaceful, almost.

The short hairs of his fringe falling down to darker eyebrows, eyelids heavy against rough cheeks, face battered and lived-in. It’s a used body, this one, a very broken and tired one. You run your fingers over its skin – it’s still him (you just had to make sure), you can feel his mind where you press your fingertips into the flesh, feverish to touch. He burns against you, white-hot, he burns out in your hands, like an explosion and there’s shrapnel everywhere within you, it hurts even more if you try to run away.

Universe knows you’ve tried that, Doctor.

You tried to tell yourself that you ran because you hated him.

Because he hated you.  
Because he loved you.  
Because you loved him.  
Because he loves you.

You ran because you were scared. You’re still running. You’re still scared. You’re still running. You love him still. You’re still running.

You look at him, burning against and for and with you.

You trace dead words gently with your nails, ones that don’t translate, ones you don’t dare speak out loud lest he hit you hard enough in grief for you to lose your breath.

_Come closer, Kosch. Can you hear how my hearts beat for you?_ He doesn’t say anything, so maybe he can’t.

His body burns against your guilty hands, too warm for time itself, it makes you wonder what makes him fight so hard to keep it.

Is he afraid? A gut-wrenching, bleeding, broken fear of losing that eats him up from the inside? He needs to be in control, you know, too many times control has been taken from him.  
Is that why he screams at night?

Is that why he implodes when he inhales and explodes when he exhales?

Is that why his nails burrow into your hand when you take it and why he keeps a dying, exploding body? He needs destruction. It’s the only thing he’s known. Maybe that’s why he still loves you after all this time. So he burns, rhythmically. And there’s a beauty in it. One, two, three, four. He breathes, one, two, three, four. And you hold him close, onetwothreefour. You and him, one, two. The two of you.

You think it helps. You hope it helps. Your presence in his mind, how his heartbeats slow, one-two, one-two. You hope it helps. You’ll do whatever you can.

So stop running, Doctor. Just stop.

How many times do you have to hurt him before you understand? (You don’t have to lie to anyone anymore. Not even yourself.)  
And yet you stand at the gaping, bleeding mouth of the universe, and you tell it: I’m sorry. I really am. He shoves you hard for that, and you stumble backwards and fall of the edge of the cosmos. And you keep falling. You keep falling. You keep running, running, running.

You just close your eyes and accept it. Let the stars and galaxies and nebulae burn you to ashes. It hurts, after all this time. But you let him.

Just stop running, Doctor. Please.

You open your eyes and look around the dimly lit room, you know every detail of it, every detail of him. You rest your head on top of his and press a kiss to the back of his head. He’s heavy against you, and you’re gradually trying to align your breathing with the slow rise and fall of his chest.  
  
_Let’s go back to bed, Kosch_ , you offer after a while, to an unresponsive body and heavy mind.

Look at him, Doctor, he who you share the universe with.

Can’t you stop loving him? It would be easier for both of you.

Another kiss to his forehead, the rush of a dreamer’s sleep pressing against your temples and the outermost edges of your mind like waves crashing in over the shore.

Why do you run, Doctor? Why are you afraid? Why do you leave them all behind?

Why do you have to save them all from yourself? 

  Maybe it’s time to stop and feel how the universe ebbs beneath the tips of your fingers as one of your hands come to brush through tufts of bleached hair, tousling it and smoothing it back down again — the other slowly back to work at the wiring, the soft hum of the TARDIS encompassing that aching space between your hearts.


End file.
